the Debba (2010) (8 page)

As we sat down at the kitchen table, Ruthy said in a tight little voice, "You want water with raspberry juice, something?"

"No," I said.

With the tips of her fingernails she extracted from the envelope several yellowing pages written densely, and held one up before my eyes.

"Is it ... his handwriting?"

I extended my hand to take the page from her, but she held back. "
Is it his?"

"Yes," I said. "It's my father's writing."

Maybe she had expected to see Paltiel Rubin's scrawl, but the handwriting was unmistakably my father's: the same angular aleph, the curling lammed, the down-thrusting gimmel. The pages had probably been torn from a copybook similar to the ones I later used in Har Nevo school--similar to the one in which I am writing now.

A bulky shape in blue-white pajamas appeared in the kitchen door. Ehud.

He looked at Ruthy, rubbing his eyes, then at me. "What you guys doing?"

"Reading the play," Ruthy said. "Come, Uddy, sit here. Move a little, Dada. Let him see, too."

Ehud sat slowly down. "How you feeling?"

"Okay."

I kept my head low and aligned the pages with my fingertips; I felt a slight tingle, as if I had just touched a live electrical wire, or toggled a pencil-knife's safety off.

I turned the first page.

The Debba
, it said. No name of author, no date.

Without further ado we began to read.

It was a play in four acts, taking place in the thirties or forties, but written in flowery, turn-of-the-century prose. The first act presents Yissachar HaShomer, the Sentinel. Yissachar is a farmer by day and a sentinel by night, when he must guard the fields against the marauding animals of Eretz Yisrael, who consider the land theirs.

The play begins with Yissachar plowing his field, Bible in hand, against the backdrop of Mount Gilbo'a.

When Yissachar's horse dies in harness, he sings to it a song of mourning ("O friend and companion, on whose back I rode in my ancestors' fields, who plowed with me the bosom of my motherland").

Behind a rock lurks the Debba, an enigmatic Arab hyena that can walk like a man. The Debba has been charmed out of its lair by Yissachar's song, and by his voice.

When Yissachar has finished singing, the Debba uncurls and turns into a giant of a man, offering to pull Yissachar's plow in place of the horse.

"You have charmed me, O son of man," says the stranger in the striped blue-black
abbaya
, "against my will you have turned me from all I know; against my will I shall help you cut the furrows of my cradle, this land."

While he pulls at the plow he tells Yissachar stories of the birds and the beasts, and Yissachar tells him of his ancestors, and of his new wife, Sarah. They then sing a song of friendship and the Debba reveals to Yissachar the secret of his lair.

"Come to me, son of man," he sings to him, "tonight, so I can teach you how to speak with all the beasts, sing with the birds."

Once again, the two sing a song of friendship, and Yissachar promises to visit the Debba, whose secret dwelling he now knows.

When the sun sets, the Debba prepares to slink off into its lair, just as Yissachar's beautiful young bride enters, carrying a basket with food for her husband at his plow.

She laments with him the death of the horse ("O gentle beast that carried me to my wedding canopy, that helped my groom sow bread in the earth's womb") and ends with a prayer to God to open her own womb, for she is barren.

"Don't turn the pages so fast," said Ruthy.

While Yissachar eats his pita and olives, looking at the mountains painted on the backdrop, there is a brief encounter between the Debba and Sarah.

She asks, "Why have you this shiny pelt that asks to be caressed?"

And he replies, "O beautiful daughter of man, whose skin is thin yet hard as steel, whose eyes are soft as morning light yet burning as the sun who gives it, why ask you that which no Beast can forbear?"

He then curls into his animal form and runs off, while Sarah slowly backs off, to stand by Yissachar.

The curtain falls.

"Wait," said Ruthy. "I am going to take a pee. Don't turn the pages."

Ehud and I reread the last page, not looking at each other, until she returned.

In the second act, two other farmer-settlers, arriving for a day's work in the field, discuss with Yissachar the predations of wild animals, who slaughter the chickens and eat the crops. After dividing the night watch among them, they debate what to do about the Beasts.

"Let us cleanse the land of putrid beastly stench," says 'Ittay, brandishing a scythe. "Let sons of man make pure these gentle hills--"

Ruthy made an inarticulate sound deep in her throat.

"--the cradle of our ancestors, of all impure and foreign breed."

The other farmer, Yochanan, assents. "Only in toil," he thunders, "shall man's son conquer, only in sweat shall he mark his claim; only those who sowed the land have gained the right to reap."

But Yissachar is doubtful. It is clear he is torn between his love for his people, and his sympathy for the Beasts whose land he cannot help but usurp. "Why do you press me thus to kill?" he asks 'Ittay. "For is the sin not great enough, to chase those whom the land hath borne? To cleanse the lairs of gentle folk, whose only crime was happenstance, to be here born while we meanwhile were gone?"

"So wilt thou leave thy land to beast, to fowl, to insect, and to thorns?" asks 'Ittay. "Lovest thou thy people more, pray tell, or lovest thou something else still more?"

The three then sing a complicated song in which prayers from the Siddur and whole sentences from the Pentateuch are interweaved.

"Look! Look at this," Ruthy yelped in delight. "This line here. Where it takes the Avinu Malkeinu prayer and turns it around and connects it with the Kaddish, and then here, look--"

"Yes, yes," Ehud said, infected by her mood. "And also here, where--"

"Quiet," I hissed. "Let me read." My stomach had begun to growl. I turned the page.

The two friends grapple with Yissachar and shout into his face, "Tell now, tell now, soft-hearted louse, whom you love most, for know we must, ere night, when you stand guard on home and field."

Yissachar breaks free and runs to and fro, in torment, waving his Bible. "The Beasts I love," he sings, "for they are blameless, but God's command hath put my heart in chains; and now upon me love has no more power, since God has called me to do battle, in His name."

At last, as his wife Sarah steals across the backdrop dressed in black, Yissachar cries out, "O listen, friends and kin and folk, and know ye that I loved thee best. I loved the truth, and justice, yea; but thee, my folk, and God, cursed God, I loved still more, more still."

Ruthy's breath came out in a whoosh. "What language! It sounds just like Paltiel Rubin, in
Golyatt
, when the holy sheikh--" she stopped and looked at me sidelong, chewing her lower lip.

"No," I said in a tight voice. "It's different."

Ehud rubbed his nose, saying nothing.

We read on.

With Sarah still gliding at the back, the three sons of man plan their attack on the lair of the Beasts, whose whereabouts Yissachar (after a speech filled with anguish) has now revealed. At dawn, they whisper together, they shall cleanse the land. Yissachar then launches into a declamatory song, ending with, "My soul forgone, son of man am I no more, but truly brother to the beast, whom slay tonight I must."

As Yissachar sharpens a sword, the light dims; and as the moon rises over Mount Gilbo'a, Sarah is seen waiting by the rock. The Debba suddenly looms before her, and for a long moment he and Sarah stand close together, looking into each other's eyes without touching, without speaking, in the light of the moon.

Sarah speaks first. "Who art thou, man or beast, that hath into my eyes so plunged, and of my soul so rudely taken?" She tries to step back, but cannot.

The Debba then speaks in a voice full of thunder and anguish. "Nay, 'tis thou," it says, "who has my heart envelop'd, in web of silk, and whispers, and deceit. You know that I forever hence must love thee, thee daughter of man, thee shameless, thee Lilith."

"Hey!" said Ehud. "That's the Abu Jalood tall tale--"

"Quiet," I said, my eyes on the scribbled sheet. "Let me read now."

I couldn't lift my eyes from the page. The lines throbbed, the words pulsated, the entire page sang.

We went on reading.

The second act ends with Sarah and the Debba falling slowly into each other's arms, and as the moon disappears over Mount Gilbo'a they sink behind the rock, wrapped in the Debba's Arab cloak.

"Yechrebetto!"
said Ruthy in awe, lapsing into the common Arab curse. May his house fall down! "Now I see why they had the bedlam in Haifa."

I said nothing. My head throbbed. My jaws ached from clenching. I could see the scene before me, in Haifa of thirty years ago, enfolding on the stage; then the furor of the crowd, the boiling wrath--

"Come on!" Ruthy raked my arm with her nails. "I want to read!"

Ehud rubbed his temples and said nothing.

I turned the page.

The third act begins with a whispered dramatic dialogue among the three friends, who are crawling toward the Debba's lair at dawn, led by Yissachar, his sword drawn.

"To cleanse we must, for kin and folk, the bosom of this ancient land," hisses Yissachar. "And if we beasts thereby become, so be it, yea--"

"Amen," "Amen," his two friends whisper in return.

As they approach the beast's lair ("a mound upstage") the lights dim further, and a spotlight frames Sarah, who is standing at the rock, singing in pain.

"Two secrets in my heart do dwell," she sings, "and choose I must, for in my choice lies death, for one or other, in my hand their fate. Shall I reveal unto the beast the secret of my man, and doom the one that God hath given me to wed, and with him, yea, my folk? Or shall I stay forever still and slay my love, the earthen-born, and doom my heart to hell?"

Ruthy got up and drank some water straight from the tap. "You want something?" she asked.

"No," I said.

"Me neither," said Ehud.

We read on.

The light framing Sarah dims now, and the spotlight illuminates Yissachar and his two friends, who are now almost upon the Debba's lair. "My heart lies still, still lies the heart," Yissachar sings, "for beast I am forevermore. Forsooth when morning comes I shall to beast and fowl speak as kin, for soul of man have I no more."

Once more the light changes, and Sarah is lit. Her belly is shown to bulge--she is pregnant.

"Already?" said Ruthy. "It takes longer than that."

"It's a play," I said.

Sarah then sings at length, thanking God and cursing him at the same time, for opening her womb and for sending her the Debba. It is a song in the style of a Piyut, a Sephardic laudatory prayer, in the complex meter of two Shva'im and a stressed syllable. Her song weaves into that of Yissachar and his two friends, and as the light begins to rise, signifying the dawn, Sarah's song culminates in a shout of anguish and anger that mingles with that of the attackers, who now rush the Debba's lair.

The light explodes into whiteness, the Debba rises, his blue-black
abbaya
spread wide; then the light turns to black. A long scream is heard, and the curtain falls.

At that moment the phone rang.

"Screw it," Ruthy said, and went to get it.

After a moment she came back. "For you," she said curtly.

For a frantic moment I thought that Jenny had called; but it was only Yitzchak Kramer, my father's cousin in Canada. His voice was hardly audible; he, too, could barely hear me over the fuzzy echo on the line. I managed to say I was all right.

Yes, I had told all the family (who were all? There were now only Uncle Mordechai, Margalit, and me) how sorry they were in Canada. No, they hadn't caught him yet.

And no, I said. I was coming back right after the funeral.

I spoke briefly with Aunt Rina (yes, I said, I was dressing warmly), then hung up and bounded back to the kitchen.

The curtain rises on the fourth act, where we see Yissachar in torment. He has betrayed his friend the Debba, he sings, for the sake of his people, and now his heart is dead.

Yissachar's two friends, standing at his side, respond as one: "There is no place for love nor friends if you desire to aid thy folk; and truth, and honor, yea, must too be slain, so future sons and daughters of man shall live amidst their homeland free."

As Yissachar sheathes his sword Sarah approaches, and in a flat voice tells him that she bears a child, not to him, but to her truest love, which he, her man, had just slain and with whose death her own heart had also died.

Yissachar emits a long cry, draws his sword and flings it to the ground, then flings his Bible after it. He and Sarah sing back and forth two different songs--he about his double shame, she about her lost love. The songs weave into each other, while the two friends, leaning on their spades, sing an accompanying refrain about the homeland now pure and free.

Yissachar's song rises by an octave. He lifts his hands in the traditional gesture of Birkat Cohanim, the Blessing of the Priests, and vows to raise the child as his own. "I shall raise him as my seed," he sings, "and teach him all the ways of man, and beast; and yet no man nor beast shall he become, but changeling: at his will shall he become whatever that his heart desires, and so perchance, shall he one day join men and beasts as one."

The curtain falls.

I assembled the yellowing pages with unsteady hands and inserted them into the envelope. At the back were half a dozen lined sheets speckled with staffs and musical notes. After glancing at them I inserted these, too, in the envelope and got to my feet.

None of us looked at each other. There was a long silence.

"I want her role, Sarah," Ruthy said in a low voice. "I don't care about anything else."

Ehud drew in a long breath, and let it out slowly.

"I am not doing any play," I said.

Ruthy hissed, "So in six weeks this will go to the State with the money and everything--"